Hybrid Rammus build

Hybrid Rammus build

I have seen a lot of people say he is a pure tank, and imply that is the way to play him. I disaggree. Rammus can be built to be a versatile champ, the biggest problem you will have though is if a team has stacked AP heavy nukers.

Rammus Pros
Rammus is arguably the best counter to physical carries. If you build him with a bit of AP a thornmail you will be able to shred the scariest physical carry with a well timed DBC and taunt. I have had defended an inhibitor against a jax and tristana who commited suicide by attaking me

Rammus can melt towers. Once you have gotten your lvl 2 tremors, towers can be taken down very quickly

Powerball ap ratio is very high (I think it is 1:1). 3 of his abilitys scale with AP

The more Armour rammus stacks the harder he hits. His passive gives 25% of his armour as physical damage.

Rammus Cons
He is weak against casters. MR does not work with Rammus passive. So if you have to itemise resist it makes your damage output against everyone weaker.

After I have finished my nashors I like to start on a Starks fervor. You only need the 1st component though (bead and V scepter)

after you have these items I usally go a thornmail, sunfire cape. Please note that you sell your PS & HoG when you run of room. Starks inplace of your PS and sunfire inplace of your HoG.

Now it is extremely handy if you have another tanky character or healer with this build. As you can see we have sacrificed some upfront surviability for a whole heap of damage.

Summoner Spells
Heal - I go heal mainly because I get improved heal

Fortify - This summoner spell in my opinion is under appreciated. For anyone who has specced deep into the defense tree it is well worth the 1 point in improved fortify. When this spell is ready to cast you do 9 extra damage to creeps. This is very helpful. Also recently if you drop fort and you kill an enemy champ (tower divers be aware) you are awarded a kill.

Ok, so now your probably wondering why use this build? Well for starters it is quite fun. It also helps Rammus synergize all his pros. Eg. Nashors actually helps boosts DPS & defence more then meets the eye. Sure you get attack speed, AP & mana regen but it is the CDR that is often overlooked in a damage & defensive boost.

With the 25% CDR you get from this item you can spam DBC 25% more often. This spell gives Rammus both Defensive and offensive stats. If you get hit with a physical attack you return damage, and you gain x armour and MR for the duration. when you gain the extra armour you gain extra phsical damage due to your passive. couple this with the attack speed from nashors and starks your pumping out fairly decent phsical DPS.

I think this is quite a good way to play rammus with the correct team set up that is not your typical cookie cutter build.

I'm not sure about Nashor's. I have found that Tear of the Goddess is surprisingly good when combined with Strength of Spirit mastery. It let's you spam skills constantly, and gives you great hp regen...which is exactly what you need to stay in lane. I can imagine after getting core tank items upgrading it to Archangels b/c his AP scaling really is great, and he is one of very few champs who can turn AP into decent tower killing.

Just some thoughts.

I pretty much ignore his passive. I can't see him ever being much of an autoattacker...you spend your time moving around and spamming skills much more in my experience. Dragging a carry halfway across the map w/taunt seems like it is always better than standing and punching him, to me. If your team is moderately competent, the will melt like butta.

I have never tried tear of the goddes on rammus. I find I ussally have enough mana to spam my skills (even with the 25% CDR) with nashors and PS. By the time I sell my PS I am level 18 and my yellow mana regen are working at max capacity ( I get the ones that increase with your lvl).

I think his passive is fairly under estimated. With thornmail & sunfire cape with DBC on it increases your auto attack over 50 which is a BF sword in damage. Add in the attackspeed bonus from nashors and starks and you certainly arent hitting like a wet noodle. I also think that this helps with his tower pushing ability. Because rammus can stack armour to increase his DPS he can take a lot of shots from a turret with out breaking a sweat.

But I like I posted previously it helps if you have another tank or healer to make life a bit easier when iniating.

Very interesting build Crujuco. I never build Philosopher's Stone since it does not upgrade into anything useful, but I might give it a try. Usually early Catalyst ---> B Veil works well against casters.

I usually don't get much AP since in my premade, I like to be the only tank, without having to rely on another one.

I always start with regen pendant (then straight to PoS) for mana and health regen. It takes 640g for to finish the PS and the regen pendant allows you to drop DBS last hit even against good harassing champs. Early game with rammus is considerably eaiser with mana since the drop in mana cost on powerball.

I think people underestimate how powerfull ap is on rammus and a couple of times i have contemplated going a tankier build and throwing a rylias scpeter in just for the slow and ap boost for tremmors.

Rammus doesnt get a great ap ratio with tremors but considering it ticks for 8 seconds I think AP gives you good band for you buck.

I'm going to present a couple of problems for you, starting with the one I find to be the least intelligent but most common, and moving to progressively more concrete and actual problems.

1. "But Rammus is a tank!!!!111!111!" Not every group will support your hybrid build. I'm sure you have experienced this already. As long as you win, you pull your weight in a group, and you are having fun, it's all good to me.

2. I'm glad to see that you discounted Tremors somewhat when discussing his AP ratios. The only way Rammus is going to survive in the thick of things is with DBC - and the reduced movement speed / limited mobility makes it very hard in a live game to get a full 8 seconds worth of damage on a single target - taunt helps, but even then, anybody with an escape mechanism is going to get away from you.

3. His AP ratios are extremely good, but you have a couple of problems with AP Rammus that bleed into your hybrid Rammus build. Powerball (even at 40% CDR / items + runes) is on a 7.2 second cooldown. That's a lot of downtime on your primary nuke, especially when that primary nuke requires careful micro control to hit properly. When Powerball is on cooldown, you are relying on Taunt + DBC + Thornmail (and maybe tremors) - which works... except (as you mentioned) against casters. Yeah, you can pick out their melee carry and make his life miserable... but you have no survivability against AP champs. If you get to the loading screen and see a bunch of caster champs, and decide to go more "traditional" Rammus - then your masteries and runes aren't "fully" optimized for tanking... but really shouldn't impact you *that* much. Relying on auto attacks for damage has even more drawbacks.

I'm going to give your build a shot, and see how it works. I can say whatever I want to about how it looks on paper ... but I won't truly dismiss it until I have first hand experience.

Like I said - always nice to see my favorite champion played a different way.

yes if I see a team predominately of casters I devaite from this build. I really hate it when this happens, there are much beter tanks for casters.

Dont get this build confused as being an AP build this is more of jack of all trades master of none.

With the item build i have once you have gotten past your nashors and have at least the vampiric sceptor (which you will eventually build into starks) you can add jungling into another aspect of what rammus can do. This means you can farm for gold or kill a camp of creeps for health.

Anyhow if you end up trying the build or parts of it let me know how you go.

NOTE - I actually went starks one game when i noticed none of our physical carries had it and I feel it actually turned the tide of the game.

I have to jungle mid to late every game I play, even in super small doses, because that's the only way pre-Sunfire that I can guarantee last hits / money.

I play more along the lines of the "kamikazi" tank - maximize survivability with a minimum of gold, and protect the big scary DPS types that are doing the actual damage.

And yeah, while this is not a straight AP build, the limitations of going purely AP with Rammus would (again on paper) seem to show up in your build somewhat. You offset it by giving Rammus a lot more melee damage... just not sure about the survivability of it.

And even as a "traditional tank" Rammus, I still hate seeing heavy caster teams - LOL.

Edit: Also, the line about "correct team setup" seems to apply a lot more to your build than a traditional Rammus. Even with the right champions to support you, they need to play correctly. This always seems like a HUGE thing to ask of random PUB groups...